Gedenkstein Major Arthur Donald Nicholson

Major Arthur Donald Nicholson, born on 7 June 1947 in Mount Vernon, Washington, USA, was an Army Military Intelligence Officer. He was shot by a Soviet soldier in Karstädt on March 24, 1985 and is considered the last military casualty of the Cold War. The memorial stone for Major Nicholson was dedicated in March 2005 at the site of his death.

The details of Major Arthur Donald Nicholson's military career are, to this day, largely unknown. What is certain is that he joined the Army in 1970, was in Korea with a missile battalion from 1973 to 1974 and then in Germany until 1979. Back in the USA, he was trained as a Foreign Area Officer (FAO), where he also learned to speak Russian. In 1982 he returned to Germany and became a Military Intelligence Officer at the United States Military Liaison Mission (USMLM) in Potsdam.

The Military Liaison Mission was established after World War II to ensure communication and cooperation between the command staffs of the occupying powers in Germany. This made it possible, for example, that the US Army had an official seat in the Russian-occupied GDR. Surveillance and control drives were also allowed to be carried out without being disturbed. With the outbreak of the Cold War, the original task of the USMLM became superfluous, but the facility itself was retained and from then on was practically used by all sides for official espionage missions. Major Arthur Donald Nicholson had already made more than 100 of these trips by the time he died. Only a few months before his death, he is said to have succeeded in entering a Soviet Army building during one of these trips and photographing the interior of the then-newest Soviet tank, the T-80.

On March 24, 1985, Major Arthur Donald Nicholson, with his driver, Staff Sergeant Jessie George Schatz, made another of these USMLM trips to a Soviet Armored Division close to Ludwigslust. Once there, Major Nicholson got out of the car and approached a military building with his camera. Whether he entered this building and took photographs is unknown and is reported differently by the parties involved.

Staff Sergeant Schatz testified that he remained in the vehicle and looked out the open sunroof while Major Nicholson exited the vehicle and approached the building. Suddenly shots were fired at Staff Sergeant Schatz, after which he got into the interior of the vehicle, which was considered extraterritorial territory and where he could not be captured. Then Major Nicholson was shot and collapsed, hit in the upper abdomen. According to Staff Sergeant Schatz, he was prevented from providing first aid so as not to be able to get to the camera. No first aid was provided by the Soviet military either, and Major Nichoson bled to death for about 2 hours.

According to the statement of the Soviet gunman, Sergeant Aleksander Ryabtsev, he caught the American soldiers at a building of sensitive military importance and first asked them in German and Russian to drop the camera. Then he fired a warning shot. Major Nicholson tried to run to the vehicle with the camera, whereupon Sergeant Ryabtsev shot him. According to Sergeant Ryabtsev, Major Nicholson was dead instantly.

On the night of March 25, 1985, the head of the USMLM, Colonel Roland Lajoie, arrived at the scene. He made sure that on the same day Major Nicholson's body was handed over to the American forces on the Glienicker Bridge in Berlin and transported to the USA. Major Nicholson was buried in Arlington Military Cemetery and awarded the Purple Heart. He is survived by his wife and a 9-year-old daughter.

An exact clarification of the incident never took place, as each side investigated independently and blamed each other. The incident triggered the final political crisis between the occupying powers in Germany and claimed the last military casualty of the Cold War. Following the incident a Soviet diplomat was ordered out of the USA and the USA refused to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe together with the Soviet Union. It was also the first major foreign crisis for the newly elected leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev. In 1988, Soviet Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov formally apologized to his US counterpart Frank Carlucci for the death of Major Arthur Donald Nicholson.